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Alibaba Adds New Countries To Its B2B Ecommerce Site

Global Marketing News – 4th June 2015

Alibaba adds new countries to its B2B ecommerce site

Alibaba has announced that South Korean, Portuguese and Italian brands will soon be able to sell their products on one of its ecommerce sites.

1688.com, which is owned by Alibaba, is one of the most popular B2B wholesale ecommerce sites in China. Until now, it has been a solely domestic marketplace, with Chinese suppliers selling to Chinese businesses.

The inclusion of these 3 new countries is a sign of Alibaba’s determination to make 1688.com the leading portal for foreign suppliers wanting to sell products to Chinese businesses.

It is not the only thing Alibaba has in the pipeline to achieve this goal. It also plans to offer logistics services through 1688.com, which it hopes will reduce shipping times by 15-60 days, and save 20-40% in import costs.

The Chinese government also recently announced that import tax will be reduced, in an attempt to make foreign imports a more attractive option.

Naver and Daum Kakao join forces against bogus news sites

The 2 main search engines in South Korea, Naver and Daum Kakao, have joined forces to announce that they will be creating an independent committee to evaluate the quality of news websites.

The announcement is a result of the growing number of fake news websites that are producing low-quality or downright incorrect sensational news stories for the sole purpose of attracting readers so that they can sell their “eyeballs” to advertisers.

A spokesperson from Daum Kakao has commented, saying: “We’ve seen some news providers abusing their power, damaging the soundness of the industry. The committee will set up guidelines to impose penalties on media outlets which produce low-quality content.”

The selection process for who will sit on the committee will begin next month, with the hopes of starting work by the end of the year. It is thought that journalists will form the majority of the committee members.

Google pools all security and privacy controls into “My Account”

Google has pooled all its security and privacy controls into a single hub called “My Account” in an attempt to allay fears about how it uses user’s data.

Google has faced criticism from the EU in how it handles user’s data and is currently under investigation by the European Commission on antitrust charges.

It is also separately under investigation from the British ICO for having unclear privacy rules, and has already been fined hundreds of thousands of Euros by French and Spanish prosecutors over its privacy settings.

The new My Account hub means that all security and privacy information is in one place for the first time, and is split into several “intuitive” sections such as sign-in and security, personal info and privacy and account preferences.

There is also a page containing the answers to the most frequently asked privacy and security questions.

German car manufacturer Daimler in partnership with Baidu

The German car manufacturer Daimler has announced a partnership with Baidu which will see Baidu software being integrated into its Chinese Mercedes-Benz cars.

The integration will allow users to link their smartphones to their cars, meaning that they can access their music libraries and use internet services on their car dashboards.

The exact date when these Baidu software-connected cars will go on sale has not been announced yet, however.

Baidu is one of the leading technology companies in China, with its search engine being the most popular in the country.

Over 60% of Latin American mobile users have visited Instagram on mobile

And finally, over 60% of smartphone and tablet users in Latin American have visited Instagram on their devices, according to research by IMS and ComScore.

Furthermore, more than half have the Instagram app installed on their device. Only 6% had never heard of the social network.

According to Opinion Box, Instagram was the third most popular social networking app in Brazil, after WhatsApp and Facebook. In Mexico, around 40% of people who used social media had an Instagram account.

Mobile social media use is growing in popularity in Latin America. 45% of mobile phone owners in Latin America now use social networks, a 6% increase on last year.

Instagram is a popular image-based social network, with approximately 300 million monthly active users.

As the Research Manager of multilingual web marketing agency Webcertain, Immanuel heads up the company’s global market research activities and large content marketing projects. He is the author of several reports and guides, including ‘The Essential Guide to Rel-Alternate-Hreflang’ and ‘The Webcertain Global Search and Social Report 2013’. Apart from being a tutor at the International Marketing School -- teaching online marketing professionals on business opportunities around the globe -- Immanuel is a regular speaker at the International Search Summit, a leading event series dedicated to multilingual search and social media marketing.